Mojang wins (for now), Scrolls is staying Scrolls

FarleShadow

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Oct 31, 2008
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Vivi22 said:
FarleShadow said:
Or how a smaller company could just call their game 'Half Lives' and get instant, widespread publicity from the resultant lawsuit along with selling alot more copies of their indy game than they would have done as people 'buy it to see what the fuss was about'.
Your analogy is flawed since there is a legitimate claim that Scrolls isn't going to be confused with the Elder Scrolls series, whereas your example would be a blatant case of infringement.
Hmm. nope. The point of confusion over which is which is irrelevant, the similarity in the names is enough to spark a lawsuit, the lawsuit starts off signficant news coverage...I'm sure you get the point by now.

Maybe notch didn't intend that outcome, but that's what happened.
Also, fanboys thread!
 

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Mushroom Camper
Sep 30, 2009
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Cheshire the Cat said:
Good. This bastard habit of trying to claim a single common word as your own is really goddamn annoying. If we did not accept it from the Edge twat then we should not from Bethesda and I really hope Notch wins.
CrawlingPastaHellion said:
Heh, once again the logic is being bashed on at the court of law. Bethesda doesn't own the word "Scrolls", so it should probably GTFO. This whole process is ridiculous.
Except it wasn't ever about using the word alone, but similarities in font, color, style, etc.

Just look at the two and tell me there aren't similarities.

ED: images didn't load.
 

Shru1kan

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CrawlingPastaHellion said:
Heh, once again the logic is being bashed on at the court of law. Bethesda doesn't own the word "Scrolls", so it should probably GTFO. This whole process is ridiculous.
Cheshire the Cat said:
Good. This bastard habit of trying to claim a single common word as your own is really goddamn annoying. If we did not accept it from the Edge twat then we should not from Bethesda and I really hope Notch wins.
And as for their "we have to sue, we dont have a choice in the matter" bullshit the answer to that was simple too. Could have just written a contract claiming they granted Notch permission to use the title thus it would still have been a protected trademark as he would essentially be acting as a off shoot of theirs in that instance. Well not really but it would count enough to not open them to people using the title without permission.
Except for that little tidbit where Notch is the one trying to trademark the word in most of it's uses, right?

Do some fucking research. This is ridiculous. Notch's Mouth isn't a good source of information, nor treasure trove of truth or legal knowledge. Ever hear of bias? Cause that's a hardcore biased source.

I hate the Notch Defense Force.
 

Owyn_Merrilin

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May 22, 2010
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Archleone said:
This is something minor, but in Mojang's favour, most people I know never say "The Elder Scrolls IV:Oblivion" or what ever number it is that they're playing at the time. They usually just say Oblivion or Morrowind.

Silly Bethesda.
True, but they tend to say "The Elder Scrolls" when referring to the series as a whole. It's like Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. You don't usually include the series title when you're talking about an individual entry, but it's still very much a part of the trademark, and in common use. Or are your friends those bozos who do things like call Skyrim "Oblivion 2?"
 
Nov 12, 2010
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Djinn8 said:
Shru1kan said:
The fact that there are similarities in visual style is beside the point. It's about a trademark and as I said before, since Bethesda doesn't own a trademark by the name of "Scrolls" it has no right to be asking anything for it. That makes me conclude that this process is absurd in every regard.

BTW, I don't even know what a "Notch" is, I'm only questioning the logic behind TM copyright claims in this particular case.
 

FarleShadow

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Magichead said:
For the record, I really don't like Minecraft, and I'm currently salivating over Skyrim.

I still think this entire affair is retarded. The trademark Bethesda owns is on the phrase "The Elder Scrolls" - this is the specific title of their series, it is at least moderately unique. "Scrolls" is a fucking word from the english language, so unless Bethesda are making a game also called "Scrolls" and nothing else, the idea that they can own a trademark on a word is nonsensical.

If you released a game called "The Pepper Grinder", and I subsequently released a game called "Grinder", would you seriously consider that to be an infringement?
Nope, but then it depends on the context of your two example games, if 'Pepper Grinder' was a cooking simulator and 'Grinder' was a weapon-melee fighter game, it wouldn't be.

But as far as I can tell, Scrolls is a Fantasy hack/magic/slash RPG and Elder Scrolls is....well, pretty similar, enough to warrant Bethesda's lawyers bringing suit against Mojang. I don't think its about defending against word trademarking, rather its about defending against people potentially creating a similar genre game with a similar title to coop their fame.

But I also doubt that Beth is going to continue their suit against Mojang for much longer, since the judgement of the court is likely to go against them and nobody likes to back a loser.